Graphite, diamond, diamond-like carbon, amorphous carbon, fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and carbon nanofibers are attractive for their diverse forms and remarkable properties, and have tremendous applications in almost all mechanical, physical, chemical, electrochemical, microelectronic fields.
Work has been done to form plate-like carbon structures on the nanoscale. The first attempts used intercalation techniques to exfoliate graphite plates. While this process has had some success, it still has the significant drawbacks, such as (1) the graphite plates exist within a wide distribution of particles of different thicknesses which can not be separated; (2) the graphite plates are contaminated by the intercalation compounds used in the exfoliation process; and (3) the graphite plates cannot be oriented on a surface to provide large specific surface area structures and freestanding nanometer edges. This makes them less than ideal for research studies and practical applications.